Me too, about 3 years ago. I still am more of a “mechanic” than “practitioner”; when it comes to color, my hack software stands on works of giants like Marti Maria (LittleCMS library), @gwgill (Argyll CMS) and Anders Torger (dcamprof). Indeed, my plan is to study dcamprof source to implement my DCP handling…
“for the hell of it” is still a very good reason to learn. In experimenting with color with all these tools, I made a lot of really bad renditions. But, when I made a good one, inspecting the toolchain it took to get there has been my most poignant learning.